7 Apr
2019
7 Apr
'19
8:29 a.m.
The portal has made it easier for those to request
blocks and for
routing to become a bit more efficient through RIP vs having to download
the encap.txt file and having to reload it every so often so the
automation is definitely welcomed in this regard. The whole concept of
ip encapsulation under ip is what confuses most people. Take OpenVPN for
example - people don't want to know it's using ip encapsulation, they
just want to configure it and have it work.
Well, that is the issue. We provide OpenVPN certificates for local amateurs
to connect to our gateway, and there rarely is any issue with that.
(apart from people making 2 connections at the same time, which of course does
not work because the certificate is directly bound to the user's IP address)
But I think what happens is: people hear about this AMPRnet/HAMNET thing, they
google a bit for information, and they get lost in technical documents not in
their language, talking about something that is not their expertise, and
expecting them to enter information in forms that they do not understand at all.
Then it is not so surprising that some bogus information ends up in the system
unless validation is improved, either in the software or in a manual step.
The whole thing with RIP was definitely a good idea, and much better than
regularly downloading and loading an encap.txt file.
However, what can be improved is the entering and maintenance of the data
that actually gets transmitted there.
That could turn into something a bit too time
consuming as well for
those who would be in charge of taking responsibility for the
functioning systems of others such as coordinators.
I'm not too worried about that, the assignment of IP addresses is also mostly
a manual process here (from mail to hosts file), helped with some scripts to
mail the update to the DNS robot and to place updated files on the server.
The number of updates is relatively small, I get maybe one a week or up
to 3 a week when it is a busy time.
For gateways, this should be even less.
Rob